


A Place the Rain Still Loved

by delgaserasca



Category: Spooks | MI-5
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-10
Updated: 2014-04-10
Packaged: 2018-01-18 22:07:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1444597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/delgaserasca/pseuds/delgaserasca
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>S8/AU; Zaf tries to come home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Place the Rain Still Loved

**Author's Note:**

> Taking the premise that Zaf doesn't die, and eventually winds his way back to England. Originally posted to LJ.

> Even the city carries ruins in its heart.  
> Longs to be touched in places  
> only it remembers.  
>  **from _Phantom Limbs_  by Ann Michaels**  
> 

  
  
  
  
  
  


Milk, no sugar for Jo; two sugars, no milk for Malcolm. Ros still takes her coffee black. Of course.

"Monday."

"Is it? I don't even know any more."

He doesn't take sugar but for the want of something to do with his hands, and the satchets rattle between his fingers. He's nervous, more now than when he woke that morning, or before when he washed, or before that, a long line of white, white lights, and tall silhouettes against the half-dark, warm hands on his wrists, and-- before. The rest. All of the rest.

"Does it matter?"

"Days of the week. You take them for granted. Cold water, warm food, socks."

"Are you making a list?" She seems amused, wry. It's comforting. Infuriating. Comforting.

He forces a smile, grapsing at old habits. "Idle hands and so on."

"Better write that down."

"Better not."

 

 

 

 

It isn't what he expected, coming back to the world, too much the same and still not enough. He thinks maybe Jo will come to him, catch him up, try to touch him, but she doesn't, just stands perpetually on his periphery, trying to decide whether to come in or not. Zaf would extend a hand in truce but he doesn't understand the battleground or from whence it sprung, so instead he sits still, quiet, his sleeves stretched over his clasped hands. She doesn't need to see the scars.

Malcolm flinches, tries to hold it in but can't. Zaf wants to tell him its all right, it's okay to be repulsed because he is too, but Malcolm deserves more than words even he doesn't truly believe, so he makes the choice not to say anything at all. It's Malcolm who tells him about Adam, about Ros' return, about the comings and goings on the grid. He's half-through the tale when the door smacks open in a clatter and suddenly Ruth is there, holding him, her face in what's left of his hair, her hands not shy, not sorry but sad.

Zaf breathes in slowly. So slowly.

 

 

 

 

"They'll want you to talk to someone, of course," Ros is saying, the roll of her eyes evident in her tone. There's something she knows about his-- he's taken to calling it a situation because that seems clandestine; it seems clean. And Ros knows something of it. Malcolm had told him how she had drowned and come back, died and come back, fallen and stood up all over again, and that's what makes him laugh a little, ache in his ribs. It's a room full of ghosts, he thinks, and he shakes his head, yes, yes, waves his hand, I'll do what they want me to do.

Ros puts her pen down eventually, trying to look him in the eye. He wonders what she sees when she looks at him. He can't turn his face towards her; her blouse is crisp white against the wall, and even in the low light she cuts him up. She looks pristine. Unaffected. Cliche. It hurts him as much as it reassures, that she is still what he remembers of her. That sort of discourtesy is unintentional and genuine, and feels like something tangible. Ros is one of three people who will look him in the eye and force him to make his body real. Instinctively he wants to hurt her in return.

"Was there a funeral?" Not the question he means to ask, but the one he proffers in the end.

"For you?" If Ros is surprised, she doesn't show it. 

"For Adam."

"Yes." She taps the lid of her pen against her thumbnail. Every strike makes his spine rattle uncomfortably.

"Did you go?"

"Yes."

Yes. It feels like a gift. It isn't.

 

 

 

 

They get him a flat, a phone, a physiotherapist, all these extraneous things he has no need for. Zaf spends two nights standing uselessly amongst the debris of modern culture that someone saw fit to burden him with.

Lucas North fills his doorway one evening when he's feeling particularly moribund, tall, dark, maybe handsome. The apartment is well-furnished, and full. Zaf invites him in because it's the polite thing to do and, dead or not, he remembers the manners his mother taught him. Lucas looks around and grimaces. 

Zaf doesn't know his story, not completely, but he knows it features Russians and a prison, so he makes straight for the box of laundry detergent next to the never-used washing machine in the kitchen and pulls out a half of scotch. There are tumblers in the cupboard above the sink, but he avoids raising his arms when he can and drinks straight from the bottle instead, wiping it on his sleeve before passing it to Lucas.

"What are we drinking to?"

"Four walls and a ceiling." Things we take for granted, he doesn't add, but he gets the sense the other man understands all the same. Lucas tips his head back and takes a swig, passes the bottle back when he's done. He looks around again. 

"They've re-painted since I was here." 

Zaf shrugs, takes another drink. "It could do with more..."

"More?"

"Space." He drops the bottle unceremoniously on the counter, surveys his surroundings. "What made them think I'd need any of this? I have three spatulas. For what? Peeling myself off the floor?"

Lucas gives another nod. "Want to ditch the excess?" He makes a half-gesture towards Zaf's new array of domestic appliances. "We can pack the things you don't need. Put them away."

"Why are you here?" Zaf asks, reaching for the scotch again, fingers already warm from the drink.

"Don't you know?" Lucas asks with a grin, unbalanced and tired, the way Adam could get sometimes when he wanted all the things he couldn't have. "This is where they put us when they lift us out of the ground." Except Lucas seems genuine, seems like a man who has seen the inside of a box and doesn't know if it's any better outside. Or maybe Zaf's projecting. Maybe Lucas is just a man. Maybe Zaf is just another guy with a cat lady for a landlady and a spy for a neighbour, and maybe he's walking, not crawling to the nearest exit he has.

 

 

 

 

Ros finds them in the morning, red-eyed and hungover, surrounded by utensils with a half-dismantled toaster and a box containing, amongst other things, a microwave, an eggwhisk, and a food processor. She eyes the empty bottle of scotch by Lucas' hand but doesn't stir him from where he's fallen asleep. Instead she looks Zaf in the eye, one beat, two, then turns neatly on her heel and searches out the kettle.

"Thank god," she mutters, finding it on the otherwise empty counter. "Where do you keep your coffee?"

  
  
**end.**

**Author's Note:**

> Title and epigraph from Ann Michaels' _Phantom Limbs_.


End file.
